Free Library Podcast

Offering up ''great facts, interesting cultural insights, and thought-provoking moral calculations'' (New York Magazine), Chuck Klosterman scrutinized pop culture, music, and sports with humor and unbounded imagination as ''The Ethicist'' for The New York Times Magazine. His New York Times bestselling books include Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Eating the Dinosaur; The Visible Man; I Wear the Black Hat, a meditation on the composition of true villainy; and Fargo Rock City, a heavy-metal memoir. But What If We're Wrong posits that perhaps the fundamental truths we take for granted today will seem ridiculous to future generations.

(recorded 6/8/2016)

''America's funniest science writer'' (Washington Post), Mary Roach has researched and written about the life of the recently expired human body (Stiff), the mysteries that lie beyond this mortal coil (Spook), the prurient phenomena of sex (Bonk), the practical oddities of space travel (Packing for Mars), and the taboo trek of human digestion (Gulp). In addition to her longtime monthly Reader's Digest column, Roach has contributed essays and articles to Vogue, the New York Times, National Geographic, Wired, Outside, and a variety of other publications. In Grunt, she tackles the science behind the extreme challenges facing the soldier-panic, fatigue, noise, and exhaustion-and the often bizarre circumstances of the battlefield. 

In conversation with Jason Freeman

(recorded 6/7/2016)

Colm Tóibín, bestselling author of Brooklyn and Nora Webster joins the Rosenbach and the Free Library of Philadelphia to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016. Tóibín will be joined by poet Eavan Boland, and journalist Sadhbh Walshe as they consider Ireland's past as well as the open society the Ireland of today has become.

This panel is sponsored by Brandywine Realty Trust and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. (recorded 6/2/2016)

Jennifer Haigh received the 2003 PEN/Hemingway Award for outstanding debut fiction for her novel Mrs. Kimble. Her other books include the novels The Condition, Faith, and the New York Times bestseller Baker Towers, as well as News from Heaven, a collection of short stories. Heat and Light returns to the small Pennsylvania town at the center of Baker Towers to tell a story of fracking, family, and the intimate moral questions underpinning the national natural-gas debate.

Researching the intersections of science, technology, ethics, and politics, Adam Briggle is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas. In Briggle's new frontline exploration of America's most contentious contemporary fuel source, the field philosopher drills into the pragmatic and ideological concerns that led the citizens of Denton, Texas to ban hydraulic fracturing.

(recorded 5/24/2016)

In 1996 Amy Goodman started a radio show called Democracy Now! to focus on issues that are underreported by mainstream news coverage. Today the award-winning program airs simultaneously on satellite and cable television, more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the world, and the internet. Goodman is a recipient of the first Right Livelihood Award, a commendation for personal courage and social transformation that is known as the ''Alternative Nobel Prize''; a lifetime achievement award from Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism; and the George Polk Award. She is the author of five New York Times bestselling books, including Breaking the Sound Barrier. Her new book is a celebration of the progressive heroes who have brought about remarkable change over the last two decades.

(recorded 5/23/2016)

''One of the most important dance music figures of the early '90s'' (AllMusic), electronica legend Moby has created eleven studio albums-including Ambient, Hotel, 18, and Play-that have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. He has worked as a film and video game score composer and producer, DJ, photographer, and essayist, and he has launched several business ventures, including a retail store and a restaurant. A vegan and vocal supporter of animal rights, Moby has also championed a variety of other humane, spiritual, artistic, technological, and charitable causes. His new memoir, praised by Salman Rushdie as ''terrific, enlivened by a bewildered deadpan humor that makes crazy sense of it all,'' tells the story of a passion for music and the search for his place in the world.

In conversation with Wesley Stace (recorded 5/19/2016)

One of America's most experienced and respected broadcast journalists, Lesley Stahl recently celebrated her 25th year as a correspondent for the venerable 60 Minutes. Prior to this she was CBS's White House correspondent during the Carter, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush administrations and hosted Face the Nation from 1983 to 1991. Her reportage has been marked by political scoops, in-depth foreign coverage, and unique features on a range of topics. She has been honored with two Edward R. Murrow Awards, multiple Emmys, and the 2015 Paul White award for lifetime achievement. In Becoming Grandma, the ''bright, terribly ambitious, and touchingly vulnerable'' (Los Angeles Times) Stahl investigates the joys of grandmothering by way of scientific, journalistic, and personal accounts.

In conversation with Laura Kovacs (recorded 5/17/2016)

''Popular history at its best: a taut narrative with a novelist's touch, grounded in careful research'' (Miami Herald), Nathaniel Philbrick's works include the National Book Award-winning In The Heart of the Sea and Boston Globe Horn Book Award recipient Revenge of the Whale, which both recount the mythically tragic 19th-century sinking that inspired Melville's Moby Dick. His many other books include Mayflower, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Last Stand, a chronicle of the iconic clash at Little Bighorn in 1876; and Bunker Hill, a fresh take on the first major battle of the American war for independence. In Valiant Ambition, Philbrick returns to the American Revolution, evincing a surprising and complex account of the tragic relationship between the greatest war hero and villain of the young United States. (recorded 5/12/2016)

A ''brilliant chronicler of the American Indian experience'' (Reader's Digest), Louise Erdrich revisits the beloved and familiar Ojibwe reservation of her North Dakota childhood-illuminating the mythical and magical in the detail of the everyday-in her more than two dozen novels, children's stories, nonfiction works, and poetry collections. Her novels include Love Medicine, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse; and The Plague of Doves, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her 2012 novel The Round House won the National Book Award. Erdrich's latest novel tells a tale of natural justice and the reparation of the human heart.

(recorded 5/11/2016)

Prior to joining Fox News as a senior political analyst in 1997, Juan Williams spent 10 years as a senior national correspondent with NPR and more than two decades at The Washington Post, where he covered every major political campaign from 1980 to 2000. He is the author of six books, including Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 and Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. He won an Emmy Award for television documentary writing and has received critical acclaim for his numerous documentary projects, including Politics: The New Black Power and A. Phillip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom. In We the People, Williams profiles the 20th-century American men and women who fulfilled the visions of the Founding Fathers.

(recorded 5/10/2016)